Timeframe: 3 days after the Shrine mission
Location: Kyoto Jujutsu Tech – Medical Wing, Restricted Quarantine Room B
The lights above him buzzed softly — that irritating hum of sterility, of isolation. Akira blinked twice. The ceiling didn't move. Neither did his fingers.
But his heart raced like it was in another body entirely.
"Vitals normal. Pulse irregular." A voice cut through the static. Female. Young. Annoyed. "That doesn't even make sense."
A shadow leaned over him — navy uniform, name tag half-clipped.
Miwa.
Her brows were drawn, concern etched hard across her face.
"You're lucky you didn't die," she muttered. "Again."
Akira winced. Not from pain. From memory.
The Shrine. The stake. The blood. The scream. The feeling of death… that never quite reached him. Like falling but never landing.
"You're not healing," Miwa said. "You're… unbreaking. That's different."
He looked down at his hands. The skin was whole, but pale. There were no scars. But he remembered how the wounds felt. Where they were. Like ghosts of injuries that still breathed under his skin.
"I didn't use RCT," he said.
Miwa blinked. "But… you're standing here."
"I didn't reverse anything. I just… took it from a second where I survived."
She stared. "You what?"
Akira sat up slowly, every joint groaning like metal stressed past its limit.
"I reached into a moment that should've happened, but didn't. I stole the outcome. I wore it like armor."
"...You're using discarded timelines as medical patches?"
"I think so."
The silence in the room warped. Even the cursed wards lining the walls pulsed a little, reacting to the idea.
Miwa's mouth opened. Closed. "…That's not healing. That's cheating death by… plagiarizing reality."
"I know."
That night, the dreams returned.
But they weren't dreams anymore.
He stood in a room that didn't exist — stone floor, no windows, black sky outside a broken ceiling.
Across from him sat a version of himself. Shirtless, scarred, blood dripping from his eyes.
"Nice trick today," the echo said, smirking.
Akira didn't respond. He backed away.
Another voice behind him — cold, bitter. "You know she screamed your name even as her skull cracked, right? That loop's still echoing. I can hear it."
He turned. A second version. Younger. Eyes red. Teeth clenched.
"I didn't let her die," Akira whispered.
"You let her die seven times," said a third voice — deeper. Slower. Almost calm. "And every time you rewound it, we remembered."
Figures began to appear in the room. Shadows of himself. Each one wrong in a different way. One with a half-burned face. One twitching constantly. One silent with no eyes.
"I'm not you," Akira said.
"You will be," they replied in unison.
He snapped awake, gasping.
Miwa was asleep in the chair nearby. Someone had brought soup. It was cold.
But something else was wrong.
The mirror across the room.
His reflection wasn't following.
It was tilted. The angle of the shoulders was different. The mouth didn't move when his did.
Akira stood. The reflection didn't.
It blinked.
He rushed forward — hand up to shatter the glass, but it vanished before he made contact.
Just him. Just his reflection.
Except…
He still felt it.
Still felt it thinking.
By morning, the medical examiner returned. A lanky man in a white coat. Eyes too sunken. Name tag read: Dr. Enmei.
"CE output is fine. Neural signatures, however…" he trailed off, flipping a scan. "You're… splintering."
Akira didn't flinch. "Define it."
"You're forming new cursed personalities. They're not full souls. Not yet. But your brain is coping with trauma by assigning it voices. Faces."
"…Like cursed-induced DID?"
"Not textbook, but yes. C-PTSD with cursed energy manifestation."
Dr. Enmei pulled down a scan.
"You've manifested three echoes in your dreams. One violent, one guilt-driven, one dissociative."
"They're me?"
"No. They're worse. They're your deaths. The ones that almost happened. Your psyche doesn't know how to discard them."
Akira closed his eyes.
"Can you get rid of them?"
Dr. Enmei paused. "Can you stop time from moving forward?"
"No."
"Then no."
Later that day, Akira sat alone in the temple courtyard. Rain tapped lightly on the stone.
He didn't sleep.
He didn't meditate.
He just stared at the reflection in a puddle.
And waited for it to blink first.